Raymond Santana. Kevin Richardson. Antron McCray. Yusef Salaam. Korey Wise. These are the names of men who were boys, ages 14, 15 and 16, when they were robbed: of their childhoods, of their innocence, of a fair trial.

Ava DuVernay retells the gut-wrenching story of the Central Park Five in her newest Netflix series When They See Us. And for the first time, this story is being told from the perspective of the five teens whose lives were derailed by a justice system and media eager to vilify them. (Ninety percent of the articles written during that time didnt use the word alleged, the director notes.) DuVernay brilliantly and powerfully captures what they were denied for decades.

I just felt the story very deeply from the minute that I met them, she told HuffPost, recalling how she and Santana had a Twitter conversation that sparked their relationship. They asked me to consider telling their story. Looking in their eyes, and hearing their story I remember sitting and talking to them, and seeing the boy in them. I could see the young person in them whod been lost somehow.

DuVernay spent a lot of time, she says, researching and meditating on whether she was the one to tell their story. As she mulled over court cases, press coverage and conversations with the men, she realized this story was mine to tell.

Not just to tell, to kill, she emphasized. I wanted to give it everything I had. And I feel like it was a project that I was meant to do, because everything that Id done up until then had led me to do it.

On the evening of April 19, 1989, a wave of young boys entered New Yorks Central Park at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue, about 30 in all. Those boys included the Black and Latinx teens who would eventually become known as the Central Park Five. Around the same time, Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old white woman, entered the park at 84th Street and Fifth Avenue for a run.

That night, police received a report that some boys were harassing and assaulting a male passerby. Police arrested several boys, including Richardson and Santana. Later that night, Meili was brutally beaten and raped on the 102nd Street Cross Drive path where she was jogging. After Meili was found, alive but badly injured, police connected her attack to the Black and Latinx teens in the park and brought in more boys for questioning, including McCray, Wise and Salaam.